Roots.
The trauma of packing up and moving on.
On the 2nd of June this summer, on a Sunday afternoon, I helped our eldest pack his dorm room and move from the life he had lived for two and a half years.
Helped would be an overstatement of my role. He did all the work. All I did was to walk back and forth between his door and the trash recycling room.
The first casualty of that day was a tiny orchid stem with buds waiting to bloom. It had been the only other living breathing thing in his room. His roommate for the previous ten months. They had gotten along well, as you can see from the buds waiting to bloom. Among everything else that could not fit into three 29 inch rollers, we left the planter behind. By the walls of the overflowing recycling room of his residential complex on One, West Victory Drive.
Also ditched were his first set of sketches, clothes, cutlery and textbooks no longer needed, an overworn headset, two pairs of shoes that were falling apart, a stack of resume folders, a rim of brilliant white printing paper, a basket of unused herbs, salt and pepper shakers, a weaved throwaway rug and cleaning supplies.
The sketches and the orchid hurt the most. Still do.
In a different world, on a different travel itinerary, my better half would have packed the stem and the sketches safely and brought them back to his room here in Karachi. Eight thousand miles away on a different continent. We would have loved to have something that came from his artistic years at home. Like the picture from his first birthday. Proof that he has his mother’s green thumb and his grandmothers flair with a charcoal stick.
But she and her magical ways weren’t there in Savannah. It was just the two of us packing away. Without Fawzia to anchor and guide us, we were two useless men silently discarding, ditching and dumping what wouldn’t fit first in an Uber-XL and then in our flight’s baggage allowance to New York.
At 5 pm we pulled the door closed one last time on the walls with sharp lines staring down a sad mattress on a raised base. His corner of serenity in an animated world. A movable desk and chair that came with the room. Two windows with the blinds pulled down. Wiped down sink and stove. The rusted brown HVAC vent on the roof the only sign of the room having been in use. Now stripped bare of his presence, personality and history.
Five days later we were in NYC walking outside the apartment where he learned to take his first steps. Where we would sit together and see the church light up at night. The apartment we had moved from 24 years ago.
We walked by Sakura Park on Riverside where he used to play on the swing set. On Broadway where the Magnolias bloomed. On Amsterdam, in awe of the Church of St. John, the Divine. On the subway on 116th when we would catch the subway to grab a film on the weekend. On the Harlem line when we would head to Saboor bhai for our Eid get togethers. On campus at Columbia with a professor who once taught his father.
I had always wanted to do this. To take him and show him all that we remembered. So that he could remember it too before the landmarks and the memories faded away. As fondly as we did.
Memories.
Karachi. London. New York. Orange County. Ashburn. Dubai. Bombay and Singapore. Every city I have lived or worked in becomes part of my essence. Paths and parts etching slivers and edges across time.
I think that is how it works for most people. But some of us are keepers. We have difficulty letting go. Flushing buffers. Wiping whiteboards. Starting afresh. Moving on. Saying good bye. Cleaning wardrobes. Closing browser tabs. Rebooting. Applying a new coat of paint on the kids growth stencil on the kitchen wall. Ditching orchids and broken down shoes in tungsten lit rooms with garbage chutes.
I am a keeper. I like to keep my memories together. In one place, close to my heart. To ensure no one can wipe them away. So that when I am alone, I can use them to light up the inside.
The reason why I hate moving? It is difficult to put down roots when your essence is dispersed across three continents. Difficult to keep memories fresh, to recharge frames, if you can’t go back to the source. Difficult to remember who you are and where you came from when the path behind you looks like snakes and ladders.
Kids are essence too. When they move away from home, life forks out new branches that run in parallel. An independent time line that comes together to merge in summer breaks and winter vacations.
For a while. Before the divergence become too wide and broad to come together again. And branches fork in directions that meet just once in a while, rather than twice a year.
This time, it wasn’t a move. There had been moves before. This was a fork.
In the days before the dorm move as we waited for him to graduate, I asked Amin to show me the city through his eyes.
His work colleagues at Public. Drayton and Whittaker straddling Forsyth park between them. The hotel where he stayed when he first landed in Savannah, by himself. The heavenly cheese burgers at Al Salam Deli. Lunch and dinner conversations with his friends. His favorite scoops of gelato. A serving of Tom Kha. Chats with his professors. A visit to the library. A stopover at the bank. A meeting with the Lego men. Fish tacos and burritos and a preference for Instacart over Amazon. The final year showcase at the cinema hall on Broughton. Breakfast and coffee. The graduation photo shoot.
It helped. It wasn’t planned or intentional. I just wanted to be with him, to see what he had seen and felt and was now a part of him. So that it could also become a part of me. A chance to make new memories in a city that he had called home for two years. Not mine, but his.
Names, faces, voices and colors. A curated set to take home, to light our mutual paths , in lieu of the orchid and sketches we had left behind.
